The recent cold weather of mid-January has continued the trend for this winter so far. With 37.1 inches of snow, December was the second-snowiest December of the last 20 years (first was 1996) and the temperature of 7 degrees was the second-coldest of the last 20 years (first was 2000).
It is quite unusual to have a month be this snowy and this cold. This is a situation that we haven't seen since the early 1980s. Though January has yet to give us much snow, we again are dealing with temperatures much below normal. During the first half of this month, about two-thirds of the days have had a sub-zero reading.
Total snowfall for the season now in Duluth is nearly 50 inches; this translates into a snowpack of about 16 inches. Many other areas of the Northland measure a blanket of about 2 feet of snow.
With this cold and snowcover, I decided to go out to see how the local critters are dealing with mid-January. Using skis, snowshoes and just plain walking in the snow, I found much was going on. The snow may be nearly up to my knees at places, but, in these temperatures, it is not packed hard and the walking was easier than it looked.
Such is true not only for me, as deer seemed to be travelling about at will. Coyote and fox tracks reveal that these canines were taking routes of less resistance: trails and roads.
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Tracks of fishers and pine martens showed them hopping through the snow, as were rabbits, hare and squirrels. The nearby porcupine has made its own trail.
Small mammals mostly tunnel beneath the surface; a few like deer mice and weasels scamper over until finding a site to go below again. I found a couple of locations where ruffed grouse used this cold cover as a hiding place and then moved on. Nearly all the local wildlife appears to be doing OK -- at least at this time.
A curious discovery were the many places I found where squirrels dug through the snow to the forest floor below.
At the bird feeders, it often looks like all the nearby squirrels come here for free meals and that they subsist entirely on my handouts. But back in the woods, far from the feeders, they were seeking meals of their own.
I examined about 20 of these snow digs. They led to the leaf-covered ground. Most of the leaves were oak, and scattered nearby were shells of acorns.
Apparently hungry for a local meal, the gray squirrels went into storage sites to retrieve food put here last fall. Squirrels are known to cache food -- such storages done when acorns were ripening are made use of now.
I was amazed at how many acorns they found. Apparently, they have great memory when it comes to where the caches were placed last fall.
Gray squirrels do not hibernate. As long as these winter conditions persist, I suspect they will continue to dig into the store for a meal. It is something like we do when we gather some apples that we put up months ago.
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Retired teacher Larry Weber is author of several books. He lives in Carlton County. Contact him c/o budgeteer@duluthbudgeteer.com .
